UNHCR compiles official statistics on stocks and flows of forcibly displaced and stateless persons twice a year, once for mid-year figures (Mid-Year Statistical Reporting, MYSR) and once for end-year figures (Annual Statistical Reporting, ASR). For these reporting exercises, country operations compile aggregate population figures from a range of sources and data producers such as governments, UNHCR’s own refugee registration database proGres and sometimes non-governmental actors. The figures undergo a statistical quality control process at the country, regional and global level of the organisation and are disseminated on the publicly available refugee data finder (https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/) after undergoing a light statistical disclosure control process to suppress very small counts of persons that could identify individuals.
The end-year figures compiled with reporting date 31 December contain sex- and age breakdowns of the stocks of displaced and stateless people under UNHCR’s mandate. Table @ref(tab:demref2020)) displays the sex- and age-disaggregated data on the stock of refugees under UNHCR’s mandate (including Venezuelans displaced abroad, excluding Palestine refugees under UNRWA’s mandate). The data is available on sub-national level as indicated by the variables location and urbanRural. Variable statelessStatus displays whether the reported population is stateless (“STL” and “UDN”) or not stateless (“NSL”). The variables [sex]_[agebracket] contain the counts of refugees as of 31 December 2020 in the individual sex and age brackets in the respective geographic/stateless combination. For example, female_12_17 contains the number of female refugees aged 12 to 17. Variable totalEndYear is the total number of refugees over all sex/age categories.
demref2020 %>%
select(asylum_country, origin_country, location, urbanRural, statelessStatus, female_0_4:totalEndYear, typeOfDisaggregation, typeOfDisaggregationBroad)
Pre-defined sex-specific age brackets are 0-4, 5-11, 12-17, 18-24, 25-49, 50-59 and 60 and older. For some population groups, data is only available for the overall 18-59 age group instead of for the finer brackets in this age range. For others, only sex-disaggregated data without age information is available, and finally there are population groups for which only the total end-year count without any demographic information is available. These different levels of disaggregated data availability is recorded in variable typeOfDisaggregation in the dataset above: “Sex/Age fine” for the most granular age brackets, “Sex/Age broad” for populations reported with the 18-59 age bracket, “Sex” where only counts of female and male refugees are available without age information and “None” for populations without any available demographic information.
t.typeOfDisaggregation
Table @ref(tab:t-typeOfDisaggregation)) shows numbers of refugees and countries of asylum for which sex- and age-disaggregated data is available, including the respective proportions out of total refugees and countries of asylum. Age- and sex-disaggregated data is available for 74.9 per cent of the global refugee population and data disaggregated only by sex for a further 3.5 per cent.
Demographic disaggregation coverage by region of asylum
Globally - % per age/sex cat. - % age missing - % age and sex missing
Demographic disaggregation coverage by region of origin
By CoO - % per age/sex cat. - % age missing - % age and sex missing
Demographic disaggregation coverage by origin country and asylum region
2020 end-year refugee/Venezuelan population by origin country and asylum region
By CoA - % per age/sex cat. - % age missing - % age and sex missing
Discuss types and reasons for missingness (NMAR) and outline modelling approach to overcome. Why is using available data so bad?